


Certain Well-Remembered Lessons

by MumblingSage



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Bondage, F/M, Femdom, First Time, First Time Topping, Honesty, One Shot, Switch Diana, Themysciran sex ed, Vulnerability, a little bittersweet if you think about canon, mostly fluffy and sappy and smutty, somewhat irreverent talk about phalluses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:59:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: Diana had felt that way often enough, that simple yet incomparably whole bliss. Her lovers must have seen that expression on her face. And did Steve see in her what she had seen in them, the women she so admired and desired, who had repaid her devotion with so many lessons?In which Diana is a switch who really gets the hang of topping her first time with Steve, with help from some memories Clio's twelve treatises--not to mention a certain Themysciran weaver's knot-tying skills. And the lasso of Hestia, because honesty can only help at a time like this.





	Certain Well-Remembered Lessons

Diana had learned knots at the hands of a mistress.

For the past thousand years, examples of Arachne’s craft adorned the walls, beds, and shoulders of warriors throughout Themyscira. Tapestries, cushions, and capes shimmered with intricate patterns in colors that could be subject to fierce debate—some claimed they involved dozens of shades, others hundreds. At times, Arachne would retreat to the simplicity of the knotted fishing nets she had begun with when all of them (except Diana, of course) were new to the island. At others, she found relaxation in an even more complex pastime.

Diana had also learned knots—and how they could be best used—from the other acknowledged expert, especially in her famed ninth and tenth treatises. It was rumored that Arachne had originally learned the art of rope from Clio herself. Yet the long-fingered weaver with her keen, warm brown eyes never reacted as if the techniques and poses Diana requested that they try had become so familiar as to grow boring.

Together they read and reread directions and examined diagrams. Arachne traced a shape across each section Diana selected for the session, curving her thumb there as the cup of a pelvis, curling her index finger like a bent arm, suggesting elaborations and improvements. “For one of your height, this may be more comfortable”—or, “Not as comfortable, but more interesting.” Then, limb by anticipating limb, Diana offered herself and watched Arachne at work. And _felt._ And learned.

At first she relied on Arachne to untie her when the game was done—it became another source of anticipation, pleasure in her own helplessness, her trust in her lover. As Diana grew in experience, Arachne started to encourage her to hold her muscles tense as they were tied, despite all distractions, then to find the right cord to pull loose—to free herself. There were times when she practiced binding Arachne, too. Most often she used knots she had learned from another scroll, one of military tactics: simple yet effective. When she attempted the more artful bonds suggested by Clio, her fingers trembled and they never seemed to hold. She enjoyed everything she did with Arachne (and with other lovers as well, over the centuries, but it was Arachne she returned to her when her arms most ached for rope), but something about binding her instead of being bound threw Diana off balance. She was so much less an expert, despite the talent Arachne praised her for. And the sense of calm command that could permeate Arachne’s every word did not seem to well up in Diana, not then. She could be certain of herself, but controlling another, even in play, aroused her self-consciousness more than her libido.

Thus it was her lessons in escape, most of all, that proved them equal partners in the game.

In that, she became an undeniable expert. From the bluntest military hogtie to the most elaborate spider’s-web confection, there was little she could not make her way out of given time. Archane took advantage of that; she would draw Diana to a height of arousal, then leave her to free herself and seek her out in her workshop before they would continue. Much as Diana enjoyed the security and sensual surrender of the surrounding ropes, the rewards Arachne delivered for freeing herself were more than enough encouragement to abandon them.

So now, she knew not only how to bind but to escape any of the knots she tied. Steve, however, did not. He would have to trust her to release him when the time came.

She hadn’t asked this of him, not precisely.

He had asked her about the treatises. It was the first thing either of them said since they came in out of the snow, what felt like years before, but he spoke as if continuing the dialogue they’d had, silently, with eyes and hands and lips doing other things than shaping words.

As he slipped the cloak from her shoulders, Diana caught it and turned to spread it over the threadbare blankets, which she knew were still the best hospitality the people of this town could offer them. It honored her. Giving him her cloak to lie down on was also a sign of honor, or would be in Themyscira, though not one courting couples among his people likely used. No matter. She wouldn’t explain with words, but she thought he might understand.

She returned to his embrace, his kiss. Hands clutching his arm and shoulder, she stepped back, guiding him—as if it was another dance—toward the bed. As she pulled off his coat, she noticed his buttons seemed to go backward, the opposite of the dresses Etta had found her at the indoor market. Was this yet another thing the wider world senselessly divided by gender?

Fortunately, the garment he wore underneath was simple enough. Steve held up his arms to let her draw it over his head. It left his short hair disarrayed, and she told herself her fingers rose to straighten it, though their combing did anything but.

He lifted the tiara from her head carefully and set it on the chest behind them. His hands drifted along her sides, settling finally at her waist, a hold that she could feel even through her leather armor. She would have to show him how to take it off, later… Their eyes met as her hand pushed a lock to his temple.  “So, those, uh—Clio’s twelve treatises,” he said. “You read them all?”

“I memorized them,” Diana said, grinning. .

“Wow.” An expression rolled over his features, eyes and lips momentarily restless with—what? “Which part was your favorite?”

 She told him.

Able to cite each section, though that would mean nothing to him, she instead recreated them—her fingers curling as Arachne’s once did to illustrate, where necessary—laughing a little at the thrill of her own excitement. With it came a rush of homesickness, bittersweet. When she left the island, she had thought only of what she needed to do, not what she was leaving behind. Against the fall of Ares, never again feeling her lover tightening a knot seemed a small thing. Now, as she described these pleasures, she opened herself to the longing—the better to share it.

That expression crossed Steve’s features again, and this time she recognized it: anxiety, even uncertainty. Diana stopped her flow of words. “Of course, there are other things…”

“No. I mean, maybe—but this is something I can do.” He spoke with a resolve that made clear one reason for his nervousness.

It was not entirely misplaced. The wisdom of Clio’s seventh treatise, for instance, might be entirely lost on him. Many sections of the fourth and fifth would be inaccessible to a couple with their respective bodily configurations. And then there were parts of the eighth that even Diana balked at.

“I can do this,” he said again, softer, warmer, a tone that spread across her skin like a caress and slipped under her tongue like honey. She would have desired nearly anything for his sake then. And he seemed to desire this for hers. Not that all the warmth in his voice came from a selfless offering. She could see the blood rush pink under his bare skin.

She kissed him, resolving to guide him through—although they didn’t have Clio’s scrolls to show him as she and Arachne showed each other, she could still teach. Like Arachne once had, she could give directions as she crossed her limbs or spread them, encourage him if he needed it, disguise her commands even from herself in order to reach the release of submission.

But when she brought out the lasso of Hestia—it was the nearest cord they had, and she hoped the goddess would forgive any sacrilege—Steve held out his hands to her, wrists crossed.

“Is this too simple?” he asked when she hesitated. “Or am I at the wrong angle—or—”

Too late, she realized what the other portion of his anxiety had come from—what he had anticipated, and how he’d interpreted her enthusiasm and her explanations, which had perhaps been more animated than clear.

She could have corrected him. But the moment passed, and she didn’t. The moment passed, Steve watching her, uncertain but ready, and she realized it would not have been a correction after all.

“You’re doing well,” she told him, then, “Why don’t you get on the bed?”

Diana chose one of her most-practiced ties, working slowly, letting the supple golden cords pass through her fingers, around Steve’s arms and down past his shoulders. The lasso wasn’t like any rope she had used before, strangely warm—she wouldn’t say it felt alive, yet it was anything but inert. Its glow was beautiful over his skin, gilding strands of his hair, sinking into the thick black fur of her cloak beneath him.

Finished, she traced along his forearm, raised above his head. Smooth flesh over muscles shivering with tension, valleys between the ridges of the looped cord. She straddled him and could feel his chest rise and fall between her legs. His breathing was shallow.

“How are you?” she asked.

He nodded. “Not bad. Yourself?”

Diana laughed. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead with the gesture, and he couldn’t push it away. She did that for him, then continued stroking, following the lines of his cheek and jaw. Instead of the soft, fine down she was used to finding there, just before her lover’s ear, she felt short, stiffer bristles of hair. The difference interested her. She stroked against the grain, then with it. The texture pleased her. She imagined feeling it in other places besides her fingertips.

Steve’s eyes tried to follow her hand, not with wariness, she thought, but almost disbelief. As if at any moment he expected her to come to her senses and—stop? Would she really ever do that, even in his imagination?

Or as if he expected the world to come to its senses and for her to vanish. That would explain the shadow of distrust—he had seen too much of this world not to be expecting some danger somewhere. He must have known she would never be a threat to him. But that very knowledge might make him, somehow, doubt her reality. So many people today seemed amazed by her existence, by the actions that had been, though far from not effortless, so natural to her. Easier by far than choosing not to do them. Yet they made her—what was the word? A miracle. _A wonder._

Diana bent to kiss him, spreading her legs wider as she sank onto his chest. Startling, thrilling, the realization she could feel his heart thundering through their skin. In excitement—he kissed her back, drawing her in—but perhaps with anxiety too, wary of this force he had put himself at the mercy of. Of everything he put himself before, naked and bound, helpless.

She had been warned that men were fallible, but not how fragile they were. She saw it now. Not the brittle fragility of the past days, the broken weakness the risk of which did not excuse cowardice but did much to explain it, but a more graceful, beautiful vulnerability, with the elegance of Arachne’s most intricate pieces yet the unstudied glory of afternoon sunlight gleaming on waves on just such a summer day, at just such an angle. And just as fleeting, as unpromised.

The thought of it made Diana tender, lifting some of her weight from him, turning the kiss sweeter. With her tenderness came a new confidence. She found the balance that had been missing when she bound her other lovers. It had never been a question, she understood now, of experience but of willingness. And willingness not to have power over, but to have responsibility for.

“You are beautiful,” she murmured.

“Thanks,” Steve said, and certainly there was pleasure in his breathless voice, but also a touch of confusion. Diana tried to think of other compliments, casting back for the ones that had always heartened her when she earned them in these games. _Brave?_ True, but it seemed ill-fitting now, suggesting he would need courage here. _Clever?_ Yes, but again, now? “Graceful,” she said then. “Strong. Good-smelling—” It was true, but perhaps more eloquent in another tongue than English. Yet none of her languages seemed able to do him justice.

She followed the line of the cord down his chest. The two ends of the lasso met in a knot a few inches below his navel, the other length passing between his legs and up along his back, finally back to where his hands were tied over his head. As she’d learned from Arachne, Diana had added a loop to the knot that would undo it all at one tug if necessary.

The lasso of Hestia had proven surprisingly easy to wield in this way, another encouragement to her confidence. She thanked not only her past lessons but also some nature of the cord itself. Unlike the Godkiller sword, which still, she sensed, kept secrets from her, the lasso felt as intuitive as the bracelets she had worn as long as she remembered.

She passed a finger again over the delicate skin on Steven’s inner wrist, recalling how Arachne had traced the silver metal between the ropes around her forearms. And there, a patch of paler skin, untouched by the sun where he had worn his watch. Diana had taken it off him before replacing its circle with a loop of cord, thinking once more about the things men kept to tell them what to do. Yet perhaps the orders were more bearable when they came from a family token. In that light, she liked it—anything precious to him would be precious to her.

As their mouths joined in another kiss, this one growing deeper, their tongues stroking with slow sureness, Diana’s hips began to rock against his body under hers. She slipped lower so that the knot in the cord brushed her own firm, swelling knot—Clio had given it many names, but this one seemed most right: a twisting, taut concentration of delicious tension that might suddenly be set free. Demanded to be, even. But not yet.

Steve turned his head just enough to break the kiss. He said, “Do you have plans for what to do to me next?”

She did, almost too many of them—yet none of them clearly strategized. When she moved from Arachne to other lovers, the first thing she learned was that every person liked something different.

“What do you think I will do?” she asked.

“Torture me.” The lasso’s glow swelled, and he added quickly, “In a good way. More of a game. But it might hurt. Still in a good way—mostly.”

The glow subsided. To her, its eerie warmth hadn’t changed.

“Did that hurt?” she asked, her brows tightening with concern.

“It wasn’t comfortable.” Complete honestly followed: “I wouldn’t ask for it. But I’d bear it if you wanted me to.”

He already had, when they left that council of cowards. And what must have been even more difficult to bear, he had faced the full truth for her sake, put voice to his fears, his inner certainty that they would never make it home. He had every reason to avoid the artifact that drew that truth out of him, but he had accepted it again.

Hestia’s lasso was not intended as an implement of torture. Instead, it had been created for the opposite reason, avoiding the brutal and uncertain methods of interrogation. No one committed torture on Themyscira, even in play. The most frightening sections of Clio’s eighth treatise were still intended as pleasure, warning against anything that would truly harm. Diana thought of the easier techniques her lovers had tried once she was bound—coming to her with cool metal instruments, tickling leather thongs, or warm oils.

None of which she had in this room. She could search something out—though she was uncertain where to look, and doubted she could ask any of the villagers for guidance—and it would mean leaving Steve. Which she couldn’t do. Which he couldn’t bear for her to do. She sensed that much in his wide eyes, his frantic heart, the way his body rose to meet hers and his lips lingered, still open from his answer to her question, as if trying to drink something in from the air between them. Or begging her to drink from them. That hunger, verging on desperation—not to feast but to offer, not to take but to serve, not to demand but to worship.

Diana had felt that way often enough, that simple yet incomparably whole bliss. Her lovers must have seen that expression on her face. And did Steve see in her what she had seen in them, the women she so admired and desired, who had repaid her devotion with so many lessons?

“I don’t want to harm you,” she said. “Not even in a game.” She licked her lips—anxious herself, but eager too. “Yet not all hurts are harmful.”

One of Arachne’s favorite forms had involved a thick loop of rope tied around the end of Diana’s braid, so that every move she made—and in that position, she could be encouraged to move quite a bit—sent a light but insistent tug to the roots of her hair. She combed through Steve’s hair once more, digging in deeper so her fingertips ran along his scalp. She had never had a lover with such short hair before, and she found it interesting—best of all, it seemed to make him more sensitive to every touch of it. She tightened her hold, then lifted slightly. His breath whistled. Rather than letting up, Diana used her grip to pull him closer. She stroked her nose against his, nuzzling and enjoying the rasp of his stubble on her jaw. Her mouth traveled where her fingers had been, across his face, nibbling here and there lightly. She sucked on his lower lip, caught his tongue as it flickered out.

His mouth. She wanted it with a pang of clarity. She rose, her hold on his head shifting, her fingers spreading across the nape of his neck, and moved forward on her knees. All this time she still hadn’t fully undressed, more focused on stripping and binding him and all that came after. Now she felt too much urgency to do more than flip up her short skirt to bare herself to him. Steve gasped—not surprise, but eagerness, she thought, once more recognizing echoes from her own past in his reactions. Ah, she had always loved doing this, too—

And he seemed to love it, even if his lack of full familiarity showed. She tilted his head to guide him, rocking her hips at a different angle to meet the stroke of his tongue. He was clever; he learned. Diana became the one to gasp, then sigh. She spread herself wider open, reaching between her legs to part her lower lips and rub her knot between them. Her fingers slipped, gliding through the wetness of her sex and his mouth. He licked the backs of her knuckles, then playfully nibbled on them, teasing them out of his way. The muscles in her belly and thighs rippled as she let him try further, pressing her knot to his lips, her hips circling in time with the tip of his tongue. She gripped the railing at the top of the bed—was this the purpose it was meant for? If so, she had much yet to learn—if not, it still served well.

When he pressed inside her with light strokes, her knot rolling against the softness of his upper lip, she cried out. Even as she did, Diana tried to swallow it back, muffling the sound she knew could be piercingly loud. Here, they might prove alarming. She did not want their friends or hosts to burst into this room thinking she was in trouble (or perhaps causing it). A lover had once compared her moans of ecstasy with the fierce and eerie clarions that poured from trumpets as warriors issued challenges to each other.

One memorable afternoon, Arachne had woven strips of her softest linen strands into a sort of bit to fasten in Diana’s mouth, specifically to let her shriek as joyously and unrestrainedly as she wanted to. An odd paradox—now her voice was the only part of her that must be restrained. The rest of her rose, powerful even as she shook with pleasure, commanding what she wanted, until she rose at last into a place beyond power, where there was only joy.

Steve slowed and grew still as she started laughing.

“Is this…are you…”

She pulled back, looking down at him. Beads of sweat shone on his forehead, and around his mouth gleamed a wetness that sent another shiver through her muscles, a sharper contraction around her heart. All her willpower gone, she could not resist bending to lick his chin.

“Oh,” he said. From the corner of her eye she saw his lashes flutter, his own lids falling shut in a sort of surrender. He didn’t move. Only felt her, tasted her, accepting what she did, the brush of her tongue and breath as she sighed in satisfaction. 

“That wasn’t such torture after all, was it?” she asked, sitting up. The pressure as her body came to rest against him, his chest rising under her sex where she was still swollen and wet, with a sweet, heavy sting of lingering pleasure, nearly undid her again. She let her thighs squeeze, rubbing in infinitesimal strokes.

“Not at all. For me, at least. Although I was a little worried when you stared wailing. But when I realized that meant you were—happy with proceedings—that felt amazing. I’m very proud of myself,” he said, then frowned. He twisted his wrists, not hard in an attempt to free them but as a gesture toward the gleaming cord wrapped around them. “Please blame that on the lasso.”  

“What reason is there for blame? You should be pleased.”

“In that case, I’m the most self-satisfied man this side of the Atlantic.” He shifted under her, rising in a way that caused more delightful pressure. “Except for the part where I’m, well— _not_ —just in the physical sense, though.”

She laughed again, and this time, he joined her ruefully. She was glad he found so much to savor in his own helplessness, not even able to keep his thoughts hidden from her.

“What should I do to satisfy you?” she asked. “Do you want more torture?”

Part of her could acknowledge she played unfairly, asking a teasing question he had no choice but to answer honestly. Another part waited with curiosity for his answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

She had asked what he wanted, not what he expected of her. But she understood—that place of submission, letting one’s own desires be guided by the will of another.

So she did as she wanted, and what she wanted was not torture, but another of those games mixing discomfort with pleasure, an intensity of sensations to emphasize how much he was in her power. This one she had also enjoyed.

She set her fingertips against his shoulder and chest, bent them at clawlike angles, and pressed hard enough that her short nails marked his skin. She didn’t break it, only scratched down the length of his body, leaving paler lines in her wake that vanished in moments. The sharp, heated feeling would last just a little longer.

It was as strangely fascinating to inflict as it had been to experience. She moved over him, chest, ribs, waist—her touch turned caressing as it passed along his thighs, then fiercer again on his calves. His untied legs shivered, but held still for her.

And then there was the part of him most clearly unsatisfied. She ran the pad of her thumb along its base, stroking the underside. It jerked against her hand, which made her catch her breath, then giggle.

“I’m worried what your laughter means,” Steve said.

“It means you are amusing.”

“That’s what I was worried it meant.”

“Not scornfully!” She raised her hands as if they could make some gesture to explain. “Your body’s shape and reactions are different from what I’m used to, but in a way that is…fun.”

“I’m fun?”

“Very fun.” She touched him again.

Clio’s discussion of this organ had been primarily concerned with its role in conceiving children. Of its pleasurable capacities, she had noted only that it might be considered a larger, though less sensitive, form of the clitoris. Diana was not sure she believed it could be much less sensitive, judging by his reactions. She tried to stroke more gently, then a little harder. She weighed the sort of globes of flesh at its base—she could think of no more elegant name for them (it was not one of Clio’s diagrams that she memorized), but liked their warm weight, the interesting sound Steve made—a mix of the pleasure she had come to recognize and a more nervous vulnerability. The cord passed to one side of them between his legs, and she traced her other hand along it, hearing another note of defenseless exposure. She pulled the cord so that it came up tight against him. Arachne had been able to do this in a way that made her writhe, the cord sliding between her folds and over her knot and over the sensitive skin in the crease of her behind. However, he seemed to find the pressure more threatening, or at least more uncertain, less clearly enjoyable. She released the cord and instead closed her fingers around the shaft, tracing a vein with her thumb.

“Are you going to let me come? I ask because I’d like to. If that would also please you.”

“Yes,” she told him. “I want you to. I would like to use this part of you to reach a second climax as well.”

“Thank God.” A pause after his ecstatic moan. “Or Hestia, or Zeus, or anyone.”

She could believe he was above average—again, having made no study of any statistical figures Clio might have provided. He was certainly a pleasing size, filling her hand and showing a mild curve. She imagined how he would fit between her thighs and grew wetter and more aching at the thought. For all that, he was not, by a good measure, comparable to the largest instrument she had ever taken inside her. Arachne had enjoyed wielding one that was longer, and another lover had tried one that was thick to the point of discomfort (when Diana explained this, the other woman asked that she use it on her instead, which had proven thoroughly enjoyable for both of them).

When she’d stumbled across him in the baths, it had been striking—and, however little he would have liked to know it, amusing—how much his sex made her think of a person shaped by the gods with an erotic toy permanently attached. A somewhat soft one, at that, and rather simple, unenhanced by any of the flourishes and improvements developed by the craftswomen of Themyscira.

All the same, she liked the feel of living flesh more than any of the toys—warmer, and indeed softer on the surface, a pleasant feeling that make her think almost of rough silk, yet startlingly firm beneath that softness. And with every touch there came a tremor or sound of reaction from the man beneath her. From Steve…

He thanked his god again, or maybe begged for mercy—Diana had called on Hera, guardian of women, or Erato the Muse for both often enough, even if she felt no need of them now—as she angled his member and sank unhurriedly onto it. It spread her, filled her, and she moved her body so that it found out her most sensitive inner areas. She threw back her head, riding him.

She put her wrist to her mouth and bit down, teeth against metal, anything to keep her cries from making the rest of the village think that war had come again.

This was not war. This was ecstasy.

She sealed her other hand over Steve’s mouth when his shouts reached an alarming pitch.

“I hope that meant your climax was also good?” she asked once their breathing had steadied.

In the low candlelight, he gave her the sort of look that meant her phrasing did not quite match this outside world’s customs or etiquette. But he said, “This must be the best night of my life.”

She blushed, and would have dismissed his words as a lover’s empty courtesy if the lasso hadn’t permitted them.

Reaching between them, Diana pulled the loop that undid the knot, but let the cord loosen around his arms without entirely freeing them.

“I haven’t done anything like this before,” he said. “But it made everything so much more intense. And you…made it seem so natural, so…” He swallowed, either searching for the word or the confidence to say it. “Safe.”

While he lived in a world that was anything but. Diana closed her eyes. “Thank you. I am honored.”

She began to unwrap one end of the cord from his wrists. “You’re stronger than me,” he said. Her movements slowed. “I’m not sure you even realize how much. How…wonderful you are. How different from us.”

“Were you afraid of me?” she asked, a pang surrounding her heart.

“Not for a second.”

Diana coiled the lasso in her lap. She held up one of her hands, then wrapped the golden strand around it, a loop around one finger like a ring, then the slack drawn against her palm down to her wrist. Contact with her flesh, in case its powers could not work through her bracelets.

“Ask me anything,” she said, not knowing what else to offer.

“Diana.” Almost a protest. “I know you’ve never lied to me.”

“Ask me all the same. In case there’s something I haven’t said—that I don’t know I know, or haven’t thought to tell you.”

He sat up, reaching for her hand. He took it, and the lasso’s glow made a lantern of the gaps between their fingers. “Do you really think we’re going to do it? That you can end the war, end all wars, return this world to sanity?”

“Yes,” she said.

His hold on her tightened. She returned it, as if sealing a pact. For the space of a deep breath, he met her eyes, reading something that he saw in them.

“Just this second,” he said, “I do, too.”

He let go.

***

Years later, she wishes that moment could have been captured in a photograph, however beyond the limits it might have been of the technology at the time (how long would they have had to hold still? Though she would not have protested), despite the invasion of privacy it would be for a cameraman with his hood and slides to intrude on such a sacred space. However little she needs a photograph, after all, to spark her memory.

She has always had an impressive capacity for memory—sometimes, it has been less a gift than an affliction—but it means she carries all her lessons with her. Including this: that if they can allow it, for one moment at a time, love can save a world.


End file.
